Armchair Explorations #1
(by Learn for Pleasure on 16th April 2020)
The Natural History Museum in London has provided virtual tours of some of its galleries. The museum’s beginnings were from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane which were housed in the British Museum in 1756. The collection grew over time and in 1864 there was a competition to design a building for the new museum. Construction of the new building started in 1873 and it was completed in 1880. The museum, then called the “British Museum (Natural History)”, opened in its new purpose built building in 1881. It didn’t formally get its “Natural History Museum” name until 1992.
It has provided a Virtual Museum with nine self guided tours for you to explore covering the blue whale, Hintze Hall (with audio guides by Sir David Attenborough), wildlife photographer of the year, balcony displays, Dippy the Diplodocus’ skull, illustrations from HMS Endeavour featuring works by Sydney Parkinson, library and archive digital collections, and collection highlights.
In some of the tours you can click and drag the image to look around, in a similar way to how you would look around in Google Street View. Take a look at “Hope” the blue whale skeleton (pictured here) – aptly named for these times, which is located in the Hintze Hall. As you’re looking around, can you spot Charles Darwin?
And when you’ve done exploring the museum remember that you can explore the natural and historical world some more with our archaeology, Darwin, environmental studies, hieroglyphs, and history and heritage courses.